


home is where the heart is

by ms bricolage (onefootforward)



Series: a hundred bits and baubles [5]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, since there's that whole wanheda thing now, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 09:01:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5822518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onefootforward/pseuds/ms%20bricolage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper tried to kiss Jose today, which went about as well as you can imagine. They’re sitting it out in opposite corners–Pepper had to storm right off into some left over electrical wire, wouldn’t you know, and now we’re having a mutual lesson in both work place safety and how to respect one another’s feelings. I’m being very productive.</p><p>Silver is up to his eyes in craftwork, now that it’s out that he can do anything besides moon after your mother. I know that’s a fucking weird thing to bring up, but being caught up in camp life means committing yourself to the oddballs. Juniper is taking real well to whatever herbal shit Lincoln keeps going on about, and Sousa continues to trail after Raven like a lost puppy looking for its owner. Raven, predictably, is living it up.</p><p>Fallon is surprisingly perfect, and me and Miller are considering the benefits and drawbacks of sending her out on a solo run. Danger in relatives, you know?</p><p>Monty says hello, about twenty different times, and Octavia says fuck you? But only twice. I’m just the messenger Clarke. There’s a lot more to pass on, but if I tried to include everyone you’d never make it to the end of the letter.</p><p>Life is pushing forward. We are well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	home is where the heart is

**Author's Note:**

> this is so steeped in my personal fiction of what the new season would look like...sadly, things are not dealt with in emotionally healthy ways, and rothensburg is always trying to make my poor children sad.

 

Twenty-seven days pass and she doesn’t think of anything except how she hates and how it hurts. She sets traps and curses fate, collects herbs and curses herself. She finds an abandoned city and scavenges medical supplies, then curses her mother.

There’s a lot of cursing, during these twenty-seven days.

Clarke gives up all pretenses and let’s herself be the seventeen-year old she knows she can be. Immature and unappreciative, the only hard decisions in front of her concerning what cause she’ll begrudge that day. Then she counts the days (in an effort to complain about wasted and misspent youth) and realizes her birthday has come and gone.

Clarke isn’t even a very good sullen teenager. She’s a sullen _adult_ , and where’s the fun in that?

On the twenty-seventh day she takes her supplies and visits Wells’ grave–they were always very somber children, and if she can’t do hating and hurting the normal way, she’ll go visit the best friend she inadvertently killed and hate things that way.

(She’d loved him and lost him, trailed down to earth to help fix a mistake not of his own making; Finn massacred in her name, and Finn died with it on his lips. The delinquents had followed at her urging, and they had been culled at the end–Clarke may not do sullen teenager well, but she does angsty adult quite nicely).

Wells’ grave is well kept and comes complete with a headstone, which is where Clarke thinks of something else besides hating in twenty-seven days.

_In memory of a beloved friend and honorable son; Wells Jaha_

There aren’t any dates on the headstone, and it’s a local rock, probably from the river of all things. Abby would’ve added something about who he’s missed by, Thelonious would’ve put his birth date. Clarke drags a finger along the rough grooves and thinks about how much time it takes to be kind to someone you don’t love.

Twenty-seven days pass after Mt. Weather, and Clarke still hates. She still hurts. But she loved Wells, and she thinks that for her sake, someone managed to love him as well. For an instant, however brief. For an act, however small–it means something. He meant something, and Wells loved everyone, at least a little bit. She can try and do the same.

 

 

 

“These are disgusting,”

“Watch it,” Big H–and yes, that’s his official name–grumbles, “they have feelings.”

Clarke grimaces at the toddler in her arms, then down to the other one wrapped around her shin. “Emotional maturity isn’t fully reached until the late teen years.”

What she means is, _are you fucking kidding me._

“They are people, not specimens. Man you healers are all the same.” At Clarke’s blank look he pushes, “Look, this one is Toto,” he pats the head of the…it, the one on her lap, “and S.”

“S needs to stop sucking on my shin guards.”

“Children don’t discriminate.”

“It’s unsanitary.”

“You,” Big H declares, “are not a people person.”

 _Yeah,_ Clarke thinks, _no shit._

“And children should respect that.” She counters, peeling off S from where the thing has latched onto her kneecap. “Why did you bring them again?”

Big H shrugs–he leads the clan just north of where Camp Jaha is, though no one ever fucks with his group due to their evident harmlessness. Clarke could believe it, if not for the armory she’d caught sight of her third day here as official medical guest of Big H and co.,–but beyond that he’s fairly nonplussed.

“Beats me. Honda is worried about their growth?”

Clarke eyes Tokka. Er…Tota. Something. Clarke knows literally zero things about babies, except that their heads are probably all formed by this age.

Bellamy would know more things, and he couldn’t even sell himself as a traveling medic like Clarke had.

“You just don’t want to do community talks today,” she accuses, for lack of any more sophisticated knowledge. Big H cringes, thank god, which might mean he won’t notice the way Clarke prods his youngest offspring away from her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t blame you,” she continues, “if I had to listen to Yeti gossip about the seed plantation from Tooney all day, I’d hide out as well.”

Big H, who looks nothing like his name might imply and only takes up the one corner of Clarke’s temporary tent, chuckles loud enough that whichever tiny spawn is on her lap starts to whimper. Clarke hands him back with a sigh of relief.

“The children do keep me awfully occupied.”

“I would imagine.”

“And the new seed plantations bring in better yield, you know that.”

Clarke has been visiting for exactly twelve days–she’s counted. She nods anyway. “Absolutely.”

Big H bounces one of his kids on his knee and grins. He’s got four, total, and although the eldest daughter is grown up and working under Clarke’s own hands, it’s the little ones that Big H keeps dragging her way. Clarke frowns at S, who’s somehow back at her knees. She wouldn’t trade war talk for these…tiny, whiney creatures any day. At least her tiny and whiney children could vocalize their complaints.

It isn’t until Big H has removed both himself and his progeny, several hours and stretches of Clarke’s patience later, that she remembers that she’s eighteen, and hardly the responsible parent to forty odd-what teenagers. That she hates. She hates them. She’s abandoned them and she hates them.

She does she does she does.

(“You always hate the things you love Doc,” Big H says, one child tucked under each hand, “the line’s too fine for anything less.”)

 

 

 

_Pepper tried to kiss Jose today, which went about as well as you can imagine. They’re sitting it out in opposite corners–Pepper had to storm right off into some left over electrical wire, wouldn’t you know, and now we’re having a mutual lesson in both work place safety and how to respect one another’s feelings. I’m being very productive._

_Silver is up to his eyes in craftwork, now that it’s out that he can do anything besides moon after your mother. I know that’s a fucking weird thing to bring up, but being caught up in camp life means committing yourself to the oddballs. Juniper is taking real well to whatever herbal shit Lincoln keeps going on about, and Sousa continues to trail after Raven like a lost puppy looking for its owner. Raven, predictably, is living it up._

_Fallon is surprisingly perfect, and me and Miller are considering the benefits and drawbacks of sending her out on a solo run. Danger in relatives, you know?_

_Monty says hello, about twenty different times, and Octavia says fuck you? But only twice. I’m just the messenger Clarke. There’s a lot more to pass on, but if I tried to include everyone you’d never make it to the end of the letter._

_Life is pushing forward. We are well._

_B_  
  
  


 

 

“How about carrots?”

Clarke hums, considering. “Purple?”

“Eh,” the sound Tina makes is probably meant to sound like an earth-buzzer, but no one really knows what those sound like so it really just reminds Clarke of the three-headed cows when they moo. “Carrots are blue! Close though.”

Clarke glances up, then double takes. “That’s ah…an interesting shade of blue.”

Tina glances down at the thing in her hands, then back at Clarke with a shrug. Behind them there’s shouting, presumably from whichever fight match is being used to solve the trading dispute of the day, which cuts off her response.

A few beats pass, then…

“Apples?”

“Not always the same,” Clarke points out, “but red and green?” She hasn’t actually _seen_ an apple yet, but being Wells’ best friend meant a lot of time with the allocated earth texts.

Tina just shakes her head ruefully. “Man, you space-goers are missing out. Apples are like…brown-ish, but they taste so so good. Genie brings them back sometimes in the summer and we roast them over the fire…”

Clarke continues to stir the pot. Steam billows and flushes her face.

“Sounds nice,” she says after a while, and probably means it.

“You’ll have to try some. Once winter has passed and all.” Tina promises.

Clarke murmurs something. It might even sound like an agreement–she’s fought it out with Lito, the tribe head, and although the deal has been struck for nearly a full year, Clarke’ll be out of here long before frost sets in.

Well. She blinks down at the neon blue of the vegetables before her. She’ll probably be out of here by then–though god knows when winter _actually_ hits these days.

 

 

 

It’s deep snow by the time she trudges to the next tribe that’s willing to take her, but at least she’s got gear and an entire pack loaded with carrots. Along with a message written across two of them, though Clarke doesn’t read it–just snaps the carrots in half and boils them into a light blue mash, the words melting away as ice builds up all around her.

 

 

 

_It’s gotten cold on the coast. Not sure if you’ve made it more inland than we had, but the new site is a fucking freezer. It almost makes you think you’re back up in space._

_Did you know that space exploration used to be one of the crowning achievements in the pre-war days? They were going to colonize Mars. How ridiculous, hey? Should’ve figured out their own planet first._

_O nearly didn’t make the move with us, something to do with finding herself in the fucking wilderness. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Lincoln eventually convinced her of how fucking unnecessary that plan was, although I did see him fiddling around with a new machete handle the other day, tiny, just like O’s. On the one hand I’m pissed, because it’s not like he can just buy off O’s compliance. She should take that new machete and stab him with it._

_On the other hand…I’d hate to leave her behind. There’s been enough of that lately._

_You’d probably tell me that Lincoln isn’t all that bad. Or that Octavia is her own person with her own decisions. I can see it now, you all angry, with that weird little scrunch on your nose you get when you start to tell someone off…well, maybe you don’t do that too much wherever you are now._

_The new camp’s coordinates are enclosed on the next page. Not much to report on camp life–Wick and Raven keep blowing shit up that they nicked from Camp Jaha, even though Kane says that they’ll probably need it someday. Sometimes you’ve got to live in the now I guess._

_Keep warm._

_B_

 

 

 

So it goes like this: Clarke hates the delinquents. A dirty little secret, because you’re not meant to despise the things you kill for. Not usually at least. But she does, and so she accepts this and moves on, accepts that she’ll kill because she loves them, and that she’ll hate them all the more for making her do it.

She’ll love, sure. But she’s going to have to hate in equal measures. She’s going to have to, otherwise she’ll lose it, lose herself in some sort of savior complex that’s been shoved down her throat since the very beginning.

Clarke thinks that maybe she left herself behind, the day they sent the juveniles to die. She’s probably still floating around in space, believing in the greater good.

 

 

 

“She’s coming before the next moon fall. They have these political meets about once every turn of the season, to make sure the alliances are steady.”

Clarke feels for the fracture’s edge, blinking down into the gore. “The Commander.”

Theo goes to move his head, but Clarke’s strapped him into place and he can’t exactly pull off a nod. Which is fine, because Clarke is stressing out too much internally to have noticed it.

“We don’t actually call her that–Lexa led the coalition, but she doesn’t currently _lead_ it.” Theo blinks up at her, “I thought you’d know she was coming? Didn’t she set this whole bargain up for you?”

Clarke twists a little and feel the shift as the bones line up. She doesn’t stare at the blood, the red soaked into her hands, but she doesn’t look away either.

“No,” she hears herself say, “I approached the tribes on my own.”

“Brave.”

“Thanks,” she pushes then, admittedly impressed when Theo does little more than grunt in response.

Once the fracture is set and the wound all sewn up, Theo paying his thanks in an offer to grab food for afternoon break, Clarke lets herself slump into her chair. She’s only been with the Tatooians for a few weeks, has barely managed to write down anything about them beyond _solves disputes with whittling competitions_ , but she can’t imagine staying now. The coalition tribes are…typically friendly, so long as Clarke mentions her alliance status and claims some type of healer abilities, but she knows how high tensions get when political leaders are involved. She was one, once. Long enough to know that there are things people can do and things they can’t, long term at least.

She’d never made it to Polis after all.

 

 

 

In Lois they have a government. Or the closest modern version of one Clarke’s seen so far, so call it chicken salad or whatever, it’s a governing body.

How it actually works is that there are little groups, mini-tribes almost, that all rule relatively independent from one another. They live in separate quadrants, though they all speak one language, as well as the common tongue, and they allow movement between these sectors rather freely. But what one group decides doesn’t necessarily affect the ruling decisions of another group, except when it comes to crop growth and, oddly enough, bush fires.

(The bush fires are a huge problem, so it’s agreed upon that if you see one, you call it in, then you start to smother it. Clarke’s barely there two days before she’s being pushed forward and marched into one such rescue party.)

None of these groups could exist on their own–there isn’t enough space, first off, and they’d never be able to amass the amount of resources needed for each sector’s population independently. In most instances like this, at least from what Clarke’s familiar with, one of these micro-clans would have started a territory dispute, and the fighting would’ve gone on until one group killed more than the other. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. _We do what we have to to survive._  
  
It’s really interesting, but more than that it’s hopeful. It’s a statement. It says, “Yeah okay, sometimes fighting is the answer. But not _all_ the time.”

Clarke stays there all through spring, then she befriends a chieftain and stays the summer as well. It isn’t until the leaves start to fall that she even considers a next move.

“You don’t have to,” Torra says, once Clarke voices her intentions “Parrish would be happy to have you on full time–the area hasn’t had a medic since Jell was caught up in that marriage shenanigan last summer.”

Clarke doesn’t answer right away, and when she does it’s to ask, “Marriage shenanigan?”

“Yeah,” Tora sighs, “overrated if you ask me. But she found some lady with sun in her hair, shit like that, and ran off to be with her. Bit of a downgrade to be honest since the gal is from the northern areas, which means an absolute bitch of a winter.”

“They didn’t want to stay here?”

Tora shakes her head, rattling the beads piled up on the left side. “The other clan wasn’t willing to let her go, and she didn’t want to leave them either. Some clans just hold on more tightly than others you know.”

Clarke frowns. “Some people hold on tighter as well.”

“True–Jell wasn’t really like that. She doesn’t even really visit, even when there’s a delegation sent down.”

“Understandable.”

Torra scoffs. “No way–her parents are in the village still. Makes no sense not to greet them at least.”

“Well–”

“And she’s even got a plot here still! Bit of a waste if you ask me.”

That bit is hard to argue with. But the rest…“Maybe she wants to delineate herself. Maybe it’d be too hard to visit and then leave again.” Clarke pushes down into her mixture with a little more force than necessary, sending poultice flying. “Maybe she knows how much she misses it here so she doesn’t come back, even if she wants to.”

A piece of poultice lands on Tora’s elbow. Clarke stops with a huff, staring down at her hands.

“Maybe,” Tora says, words slow–she’s making food, using a lot of the same ingredients as Clarke’s medicinal concoctions, and is more subdued when she reaches over to grab a handful of wildflower and continues, “But it’s always been her choice.”

Clarke murmurs something, an agreement of sorts. The mix she’s currently working on is a mild anesthetic and it makes her hands tingle, separate in a way from the rest of her.

Tora clears her throat. “Would you? Stay on as a medic? Parrish says that you’ve just been wandering about, we could give you a home.”

Inexplicably this makes Clarke want to cry. She stops what she’s doing altogether, though this makes the numbness in her hands worse, and turns to Tora.

“In another life,” she admits, because she likes Torra a lot, she does, “but I’m actually already set in this one.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Clarke replies, and finds that she means it.

 

 

 

_Fallon went out with her own party today and brought back the most god damn big ass buck you’ve ever seen. Thing had three full heads. She’s a far_ _better tracker than most of the senior officials on roster, though you wouldn’t know that with how Abby and Kane treat her–treat any of the original survivors really. There’s a clear line between us and them Clarke, make no mistake. They know it as well._

_Still–we threw a party that night for her, and if there was ever a reason for you to come back it’s to see the serious and infallible Iko drunk off her ass. Had to get Wick to rescue the poor thing out of a tree._

_Ginger is really coming into their own as well; there was a minor threat from the south and they sorted the problem out long before anyone had spotted it. Tin–such a strategist–has apparently been teaching them some stuff, and it shows. Miller was so impressed that he took part in the drinking game Monty started last night–did you know the two of them knew each other back on the Ark? There’s something going on there I swear._

_Look Clarke…I know that you don’t like it being brought up, but I think it’s fucking shortsighted of you to say that you can’t lead the people and be happy. You’re forgetting that we would be doing it together. You don’t have to choose between the two things._

_Besides, no one is happy all of the time. That’s crazy. And exhausting._

_I’m saying this because…well, we’re striking out. I don’t know where or when yet, but I do know we’d all rather have you with us._

_Be in touch soon,_

_B_

 

 

 

“Is it lonely up there?”

Clarke draws her knees up, makes herself small. “What do you mean?”

Sue’s eyebrows furrow–they do that a lot, happy or sad or confused. “Well,” she says, considering, “there’s only so many of you, and you can’t get any bigger. Doesn’t it get lonely, all tucked up in space on your own?”

They’re currently researching how many nights one can go without sleeping–Clarke’s up as it is, stomach ebbing and flowing with every thought, and Sue is…well, Sue likes a challenge. Any challenge really. It makes for excellent pillow talk, if you take away the pillow and replace it with the grassy bedroom floor of the Teona hills.

“I didn’t even know everyone on board.” Clarke admits around a yawn. “It wasn’t small, it just wasn’t…expandable.”

Sue flops over. “I dunno. I think I’d be bored to tears if it was just my clan down here all by ourselves. No places to travel to or people to defeat in battle. No possibilities! It sounds dreadful.”

Clarke snickers. “To you I imagine it would. No one to stir drama up with?”

“Shit, you have one measly little fight over your honor and suddenly it’s all anyone ever brings up.”

“Maybe,” Clarke laughs, “maybe if you’d been planning on choosing _either_ of the fighters–”

Sue grumbles. “Yeah well.”

They settle into a comfortable silence then, which is becoming a common occurrence as they pass more and more nights awake. It’s been a beautiful day, settling into a brisk autumn dusk, and Clarke’s a bit bitter about it.

If she was going to feel so shitty, the least the weather could do was honor it.

“It wasn’t lonely,” she says at length, thinking it over, “or at least, it wasn’t lonely because it was in space. It was lonely because it was so…competitive. You could say something about a neighbor and they’d be floated the next day. Or misuse your rations and find yourself locked up for your entire childhood. It’s hard to make friends like that, let alone find people you care for.”

“Care for?” Sue asks dryly.

“ _Yes_. You have to trust someone to really care for them.”

She rolls back on her elbows. “Love them you mean.”

“Clarke startles. “No, I don’t.”

“You can care about someone and not trust them. I care about you.”

“Oh,” Clarke tries to nudge an elbow at Sue and ends up a foot farther down the hill, “that’s nice to know.”

“I’ve known you for a month now,” Sue is very matter of fact, her tone brooking no argument, “and all you’ve done is mope after messengers and been far too gleeful about blood. Can you blame me for maybe not trusting you?”

Clarke stiffens. “I’m never _gleeful_.”

Sue’s voice is solemn when she answers, “I said _too_ gleeful–no one should ever smile while elbows deep in someone’s stomach.”

“That’s…fair.”

“Mhmm.”

“I am a healer though,” she points out, “so really–”

“We could talk about the moping instead?”

“Nope,” she says quickly, “all good.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Clarke sits still for a moment and feels her stomach begin roiling again, the words going down stiffly and with shapes edges that chafe her throat. The crickets are starting to come out, their chimes all that she can hear over the blood rushing to her head.

 _Love_ , what a ridiculous thought.

 

 

 

_I know this one is sooner than the others, but I thought you’d want to know that it’s been decided. We’ve talked it out and after the next frost we’ll be leaving the main camp._

_Things aren’t changing around here Clarke. There’s still capital punishment and Ark regiments rolling about. Jaha has come back with some insane plan…look, the point is, it’s time. We don’t belong under the Ark’s thumb any longer, and we won’t stay there._

_There’s a big enough world for us out there now. You should know that._

_You should also know…well, your input will always be welcomed. Always._

 

 

 

Clarke is in transit when the first flake hits–she’s only had one winter here, but one was enough to know that sometimes the seasons skipped over one another in a giant _fuck you_.

She stares up at the greying sky and thinks, _yeah well, fuck you too_.

Then she starts to cry.

 

 

 

“It’s not that easy.”

“It can be.”

There’s a creak to the ship that wheezes with each exhale she takes, one that wasn’t there when it was first brought down. It’s a small thing but it makes Clarke uneasily aware of how much time has passed.

“That’s unhelpful,” she eventually says, “Besides–before you needed me. You don’t now.”

He scoffs. “Is that what you want? To be needed?”

She thinks, _doesn’t everyone?_ , but neither of them have been prone to sentimentality. So she says, “I don’t need to be anything. That was the point.”

He sighs. “I know. But I’m not going to cage you into this so that you can say we forced you, then you can start to resent the whole thing and fuck off again. _That’s_ unhelpful.”

She’s quiet. There’s a moment where she can almost hear her mother, _be good Clarke, just be good_.

“We don’t need you Clarke,” Bellamy says, his voice interrupting, clanging about the dropship.

“You don’t.”

“We don’t.”

She sighs. It’s quiet, not big or noisy or anything like the earth-shattering revelation it feels like.

“You’ve managed all this time without me.”

“We did,” he confirms. “And we moved on.”

Clarke thinks she might start crying again. Bellamy leans sideways, his leg pressed against hers, another line touching from her shoulder down to her arm. There’s a breathless moment where the last year catches up to her, and it feels like relief.

“I liked the power,” Clarke admits in a wavering voice, “I liked having control. When I started losing it…when I didn’t know what to do or say or what to feel–I lost it.”

Bellamy murmurs something. Clarke doesn’t hear the words as much as she feels the tone, the cadence of assurance. They’ve always had this, this admittance of their worser selves.

Her voice cracks. “I did bad things Bellamy. While you were gone…I hated them, for leaving me to make those decisions. I hated them but I still chose to kill so–so many people, just to keep them safe.”

She doesn’t think she’s a monster–there’s just something about throwing stones in glass houses, a euphemism she never really understood as a child. Now she can’t call anyone else a monster either.

Bellamy says, “You kept me safe.” He says, “O told me everything.”

“I figured.”

And she had–Octavia is inevitably bitter yet over the Things that had gone down last fall. It’s still nice to not have to run through the numbers.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done.” There’s an apology stuck under his tongue, but Clarke’s spent three hundred days wrestling with two truths: she’s killed a lot of people, she’s kept a lot of people safe.

The numbers don’t add up. She’s killed more, and no amount of saving can change that. She could be a medic for years and years, but for every life she gets, she’ll end up taking more.

“I didn’t either,” she says, “until I did it.”

“It saved me.” Bellamy glances around them–this space is filled with so much, so many memories, it’s a relic in its own right, and hard to ignore, “And you saved them.”

“I love them.” A sigh. “Who knows how, since I’ve been away longer than I’ve been with them, but I do.”

“They miss you too.”

“Don’t pander.”

“I’m not,” he leans back, legs splayed out. “Your name comes up, when it’s just our group.”

“At your little separation meetings?”

Bellamy snorts. “Yeah, those. But other times as well–Sousa’s adulthood, or when Tin snuck into the eastward camp and got enough brew for us to pilfer the first batch.”

“Of course you did.”

“Hey,” he jibes, “I’m a responsible adult–not a saint.”

“Clearly,” then, because she can’t help herself, “So there’s no chance of it working out with the whole camp?”

He frowns. Clarke isn’t even look straight at him and she can feel it, that’s how strong of a frown it is.

“No. It’s bad enough that they demean our skills–the kids, they’re half the camp and get no say because they’re too young. Like that means anything when we fought harder than they did just to survive.”

Clarke huffs an agreement. “They don’t understand,” she says, “they were only here for Mt. Weather, where everyone was so helpless. Not for the all the times we weren’t.”

Bellamy scoffs. “Like that time we all got stoned on weird vegetables?”

She shoulders him. “How about surviving the drop? How about not letting everyone die? It wasn’t just grounders or the elements…it was hard, trying to herd a bunch of delinquents who had just found their freedom.”

“I guess,” he smirks at her. “We did good.”

She smiles. “Thanks. But I mean–you’re still doing good. It’s…I trust you Bellamy,” Clarke pats the nearest body piece, a kneecap she thinks, “if you say it won’t work, it won’t.”

Bellamy doesn’t say anything, which is a statement in and of itself. But he does lay on hand overtop of hers, and for a moment they just listen to the old wheeze and creak of the dropship together, silent. A lot happened here. She killed hundreds of grounders from this command. She saved Finn here. A few meters away, she saved Jasper.

Bellamy found his freedom. And his sister. If Clarke’s story is constantly balancing the things she’s taken with the things she gives, then Bellamy’s is probably finding one thing only to lose another.

Well–so she says. Who is she to fucking decide what his story is?

Almost as if Bellamy takes some sort of silent cue from this, from the scrapping of Clarke’s old self-absorbed pride, he drapes his arm around her shoulder and pulls her into a slow but sturdy embrace. It feels a bit like he’s herding a startled animal, or maybe it’s just this; because fuck expectations, or something to that effect. Clarke doesn’t care, honestly, especially since she thinks she’s starting to cry again.

It’s been a long few weeks.

“I don’t know if I can do any of it Bellamy,” she whispers guiltily, choked up, “I don’t know how.”

It’s the biggest admission of all. One of failure really. Only, it doesn’t feel so bad with the way Bellamy keeps close to her, his fingers pressed tight again her side. Like he’s promised to keep her together until she finds a way back herself.

She was happy traveling, undoubtably. But she was also missing something, something big and important.

“We’ll figure it out together then. You don’t have to find all the answers just yet.” Bellamy says, and she thinks, _yes that’s it,_ “If what you want is to come home, just say so–you’re halfway there.”

She lets her head rest on Bellamy’s chest–it’s his fault really, for putting it right there. She’d run away because she hated what she’d become. Maybe she can come back because she’s figured out what she’s not.

Her voice barely trembles at all. “I want to come home.”

Bellamy huffs. “Well then,” he pulls her tighter, “welcome home.”

 

 

 

“He was so much calmer than I thought he would be,” O sighs, “You know how it is. Bell’s got attachment issues. But he barely tried to find out where you’d run off to!”

Clarke stares into the mush she’s making, preoccupied with the delicate balance of spices and ‘please-let-this-not-blow-up’. She’s not really paying attention when she says,

“Oh yeah, well we were writing letters the whole time.”

There’s silence. Well, there’s some funny gurgling noise coming from the pot, but mostly there’s silence. Then:

“What?”

Clarke hums. “Yeah. Someone found me in the Cruz base camp, said I had a message from one of the alliance clans. It’s what gave me the idea to travel between the groups actually.”

“He talked to you the whole time?”

“Well,” she frowns, “not the whole time…there was at least a few weeks between when I left and when I first heard from him.”

Octavia mumbles something incoherent behind her. Then she lays a hand on Clarke’s shoulder.

“I’m–one moment, don’t get to the good part without me.”

Clarke figures Octavia means the exploding part. She’s only mildly insulted that there’s the _assumption_ of explosion, mostly because…well, there is one.

“Okay?”

“Good. Great,” her voice is strangled, “be right back.”

Clarke looks up then and nods, watching as Octavia stomps her way into the middle of the new common grounds–with only some forty odd-what people in their clan, the camp doesn’t have to be all that large, especially as they transition into traveling with it.

“Bellamy Cornelius Blake,” she hollers, “so help me, get your butt out of that meeting and get down here right now, I have a bone to pick–”

The rest is cut off as Octavia storms into the big tent, the one Clarke had traded her medical good will for way back last spring. She blinks as the flap to her tent billows shut, as if even the door itself is unimpressed with Clarke’s news.

A beat passes, then she shrugs. Oh well, it’s not like she’s the one with the sister here.

“In any case,” she mutters to herself, “I certainly hope she made up that middle name. It’s terrible.”

There’s a muted _thump_ immediately following this sentence, then Bell’s voice distantly going, “It wasn’t like that!”

She stirs her pot. Something steams and gurgles again. Inevitably Monty and Raven will find her in a few moments, the former because he’s overhead the Blakes shouting, the latter because she can _smell_ impending trouble. And tonight, when all is said and done, Clarke will sit around the big fire and listen to Fallon talk about whatever thing she managed to kill today. She’ll probably even laugh at something–although hopefully not too much. She’s got a rep to maintain after all.

(And well, it’s not perfect but.

It’s good to be home.)


End file.
